The Pac-Man maze layout: dimensions, tunnels and the ghost house
One maze, 28 tiles wide and 31 tall, used on every one of 255 boards. Its geometry is why the ghosts feel fair and why a single layout stayed interesting for decades.
Dimensions
The playfield is a grid of 28 columns by 31 rows, each tile 8 by 8 pixels, so the maze is 224 by 248 pixels on a 224 by 288 vertical display; the remaining rows hold the score at the top and the lives and fruit counter at the bottom. Characters are 16 pixels wide, two tiles, and are tracked by the tile under their centre point, which is the basis of the targeting rules in pacman ghost behavior patterns.
What the maze contains
- 240 dots and 4 power pellets, one pellet in each corner region. The arithmetic is in pacman points per dot.
- The ghost house, an 8-tile-wide box in the centre with a single door that only ghosts can pass, where the four ghosts start (Blinky starts just above it).
- Two warp tunnels on the left and right edges of the middle row, which connect to each other. Ghosts slow to 40 to 50% inside; Pac-Man does not.
- Pac-Man's start tile, directly below the ghost house, where fruit also appears.
- Four no-up corridors, two above the house and two below, where ghosts cannot turn upward in scatter or chase.
Symmetry and flow
The maze is mirror-symmetric left to right, which keeps it readable and lets players transfer routes between sides. There are no dead ends: every corridor connects to at least two others, so there is always a theoretical escape, and the "pockets" players fear are really short loops that take longer to exit than a ghost takes to arrive. Corridors are one tile wide, so ghosts and Pac-Man cannot pass each other; a collision happens when the centre points overlap.
Why only one maze?
Memory. The original board has a few kilobytes of ROM, and the designers spent it on ghost behaviour, animation and sound rather than extra layouts. Toru Iwatani has also argued that a single maze makes mastery possible: patterns, perfect games and the whole competitive scene depend on the layout never changing. Ms. Pac-Man's four mazes, introduced in 1982, were the first major change and are compared in ms pacman gameplay differences.
Reading the maze like an expert
- Learn the four scatter corners: Blinky top-right, Pinky top-left, Inky bottom-right, Clyde bottom-left. Ghosts circle the loops nearest those corners during scatter.
- Memorise the two no-up corridors beside your start position. Entering them from below and turning up is a reliable escape because ghosts cannot follow upward.
- Treat the tunnel row as the safest row in the maze.
- Note the long vertical corridors at the far left and right: ghosts arriving there in chase mode commit for several seconds.
Combined with the timers in pacman energizer explained, these landmarks are the foundation of the patterns described in advanced pacman strategy.
Mazes in later games and on this site
Championship Edition splits the screen into two halves that regenerate; Pac-Man 256 scrolls upward forever; Pac-Man 99 shrinks nothing but adds opponents. The games on the free mr pacman arcade games use procedurally generated mazes with no dead ends, a central pen and four corner orbs, borrowing the structural ideas above while using original layouts and characters.
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Frequently asked questions
How big is the Pac-Man maze?
28 tiles wide by 31 tiles tall, 224 by 248 pixels.
How many mazes does the original Pac-Man have?
One. The same layout repeats on every board.
What is the ghost house?
The central box where three ghosts start and all ghosts return after being eaten.
Are there dead ends in the Pac-Man maze?
No. Every corridor connects in a loop.
What are the tunnels in Pac-Man?
Two openings on the left and right edges of the middle row that connect to each other and slow ghosts down.